Recently I ran into an interesting scenario in which I used the VMware Converter 4.0 to P2V (Physical to Virtual) machines on a stand-alone training network to VMware Workstation/Player images on a removable harddrive.   I then took those images and used Converter to put them on ESX 4.0.  Everything went smoothly.  When I attempted to power on the converted machines on ESX I got this: “Device ‘USB’ is not supported”  Obviously, I know this….  no USB on ESX.  But, since the physical machiens were originally converted to a Workstation image (which does support USB) they were maintained.  When I edited the Virtual Machine settings and attempted to remove the “USB” devices, it would not actually remove them (although it pretended that it did.

If you find yourself in this situation, you will need to edit the VMX file or use the ‘Advanced’ settings editor in vSphere Client to remove the references to the USB devices manually.  Once that is done, they should fire up with no problem!

Dear VMware,

In case you hadn’t heard, I wanted to formerly notify you that Microsoft will be releasing its next generation operating system: Windows 7 this month on October 22, 2009.  I hope you will be able to make it a supported Guest platform sometime in the near future.

Sincerely,
Ryan

Ok, seriously…  I was told by VMware in the spring that Windows 7 would be fully supported in vSphere.  To date, I cannot run the vSphere client on my Windows 7 PC without “hacking it.”  Likewise, I can’t run Windows 7 RC or RTM as a guest on ESX 3.5 or 4.0 without doing some un-orthodox hassles with different versions of the VMware tools and network adapter drivers.  Admitedly, Windows 7 has not been officially released yet… but much of VMware’s target customer spectrum has had access to the RTM now for several weeks.  In my organization, we are deploying it both in production and our test labs.  Maybe I am being a little harsh on VMware, but being that OS virtualziation is their bread and butter, I have an expectation that they would be on top of this (relatively minor) Windows upgrade… especially considering that Microsoft has done a pleanty good job of making sure that IT and Developers have had access to the product and documentation throughout the release schedule.

In the meantime, if you are looking for a business case for Hyper-V, this could be it.  Not surprisingly, Windows 7 works right-out-of-the-box.

On Monday (9/21) I will be down in Orlando at the OTTC conference talking about application and hardware virtualization in the ECM environment!  If you are part of the OnBase community attending the conference, would love to see you at the virtualization sessions, or stop by at the Expert Stations and say hello!

In these days of readily available virtualization technology, I like to install new operating systems in virtual machines before I commit it to my machine. I do this all the time with Linux and Windows. So, with the release of Snow Leopard, I decided to give it a shot, and I thought VMware Fusion supported it out of the box. But, I mistakenly missed the keyword Server. Now, we’ve covered this before for the Mac Test Lab, but I found another, more permanent solution here.

The method linked to above actually modifies the darwin.iso image that comes with Fusion so that it looks for SystemVersion.plist instead of ServerVersion.plist.

I would consider this a better solution than what was mentioned in the Mac Test Lab post simply because it’s a one-time deal. You will likely have to redo it every time you reinstall VMware Fusion, but it will work all the time, for both Client AND Server install disks.

Now, If only I could get sound to work in Snow Leopard in VMware Fusion. Other than sound, everything else seems to be working pretty well.

In addition to having a name that doesn’t fit nicely in the context of a TLA (Three Letter Acronym), there are some other potential frusterations that you may run into during the install of Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 if you don’t do some upfront planning.

I will start of by disclaiming that this article is composed completely off my own experience and research with the product as I’m just starting into the Hyper-V realm.  If anyone has any other thoughts or knows differently, please feel free to comment.

The System Center interface is notably, in my opinion, one of the foremost selling points for Microsoft’s virtualization platform.  In addition to a familiar, intuitive interface for managing your Hyper-V virtual machines in Virtual Machine Manager, you can also connect to ESX Virtual Center and manage your ESX farm from the same interface.  Add SSOM and you can manage your physical machines (if anyone still has any of those laying around).  All-in-all Microsoft already has a solid and very powerful systems management platform in the System Center product line, and Virtual Machine Manager fits right in and doesn’t disappoint. Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago, Microsoft submitted 20,000 lines of code to the Linux Kernel. This code is three device drivers that will make it more possible for Linux to run smoothly in a Hyper-V virtual machine! This is really out of the ordinary. It seems Microsoft is realizing that running Linux is desirable as a Guest OS, but perhaps only to stay in the virtualization market. Previously, there was limited success getting Linux (I think I tried Ubuntu Linux) to boot in Hyper-V (at least when I tried it).

To see the Linux Communities stance on this code, check out this article.

Matt Asay just posted an interesting article about how virtualization products such as Microsoft’s Hyper-V could potentially make VMware turn out like Novell. His article has a point. While VMware is widely known as one of the best virtualization products out there, it could change in the future because of products like Hyper-V, and it’s not because Hyper-V is a better product; It’s because companies will often go for products that are “good enough” for their purpose.

If a company simply wants to run a few virtualized machines to cut down a little bit on costs, they may not be interested in some of the high-end features VMware’s products offer. Or if they are interested in them, they may decide it isn’t absolutely necessary in the end.

This is not to say it is all over, though. And VMware has already taken some steps to combat their competition. And what it all comes down to is that VMware’s core business is in virtualization, while other companies just have virtualization products as a complement to their existing products and can therefore afford to have lower pricing.

Definitely check this article out.